Alex Prager Wraps The Hyundai Card Music Library In Her Artwork.

Alex Prager Hyundai Music Card Library Installation

Because it’s outdoors and the elements eventually destroy the work, the Hyundai Card Music Library in Seoul, Korea commissions an artist to wrap the building with artwork every five years. Los Angeles’ Alex Prager is the latest artist whose photographs, Hitchhiker and Big Valley, are embellishing the walls and ceiling of the building’s plaza.

Alex Prager Hyundai Card Music Library

Alex Prager Hyundai Card Music Library 

Hyundai Card is a credit card company under Hyundai Motor Group headquartered in Seoul, South Korea whose Music Library, built in 2016, was created as a forum for music performance and education. It consists of a concert hall, an artists’ lounge complete with practice studios, an open performance plaza, a café and a carefully curated music library – home to one of the largest specialized music collections in the world- for Hyundai Card-carrying members.

inside hyundai card music library

Hyundai card music library photos

The project’s design echoes the texture and imperfection of the analog media it celebrates and has established itself as a new attraction where visitors can experience visual arts as an open gallery.

Alex Prager Hyundai Music Card Library Installation IIHIH

street view of alex prager installation

Replacing a previous commission by French artist JR, Alex Prager’s saturated photographs of her work are now featured, larger than life, on the Music Library.

hyundai card music library artist JR
The previous installation on the Music Library by French artist JR
ALEX PRAGER INSTALLATION SEOUL 1
Now the Music Library features the artwork of Alex Prager

Prager is best known for her realistic, life-size sculpted figures arranged in elaborately staged scenes. Her photographic narratives are simultaneously surreal and realistic, frozen in a moment of time.

Hitchiker by alex prager 2019
Alex Prager, Hitchhiker, 2019

“This is an amalgam of all I’ve collected moving through life…my memories, films I’ve loved, people I used to know, art I’ve been influenced by, my family and friends I use as my subjects, questions I have about society and the state of the world. It all goes into the blender in my mind and came out as Play the Wind.” – Alex Prager ~ Hitchhiker, 2019 from PLAY THE WIND

hyundai card music library prager installation
Prager’s Hitchhiker covers the walls of the Music Library’s Plaza

Bouncing being reality and fiction, the images at first appear to be the depiction of everyday people, but further inspection of the images reveals that the people are not real, that there are wrinkles in the asphalt and other minute clues to their fabrication.

Big valley, Alex Prager, 2019
Big Valley, Alex Prager, 2019
Prager's Big Valley on the ceiling of the Music Library's Plaza
Prager’s Big Valley on the ceiling of the Music Library’s Plaza

Visitors cannot ignore the dramatic perspectives of Hitchiker and Big Valley

hyundai card music library prager installation

The installation as it appears at night:
Alex Prager Hyundai Music Card Library Installation at night1

Alex Prager Hyundai Music Card Library Installation at night

Alex Prager Hyundai Music Card Library Installation at night2

Alex Prager

Photos by Yongjoon Choi, courtesy of Hyundai Card and also by Cheon Choi and 현대카드 DIVE

The Hyundai Card Music Library + Understage were designed by Gensler.